Gephardt proposes health care for most

Dan Balz, Washington Post

Published
4:00 am PDT, Thursday, April 24, 2003

2003-04-24 04:00:00 PDT New York -- In a bid to set the Democratic agenda for the 2004 presidential campaign, Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., on Wednesday proposed an ambitious plan to provide access to health insurance for all Americans -- at an initial cost of $210 billion a year -- and said he would scrap all of President Bush's tax cuts to help pay for it.

Gephardt presented his plan as both a solution to what he termed the moral imperative of providing health-care coverage to the estimated 41 million Americans without insurance and as an economic program that offers voters a clear alternative to Bush's tax-cutting economics.

"This is the right way to stimulate the economy, not knee-jerk tax cuts that do nothing but pay off George Bush's wealthy campaign contributors while killing economy growth," Gephardt told Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union.

He said his plan would produce "an economic stimulus more powerful than any this country has ever seen."

Gephardt's proposal requires all employers to provide private health insurance to workers and offers refundable tax credits to corporations, including those that now offer insurance, to offset 60 percent of their costs of insurance.

He also called for assistance for low-income workers to help them pay their share of insurance premiums, smaller measures to expand coverage for Americans who are unemployed, and a large grant to state and local governments to relieve their current budgetary crisis.

The plan's sheer size and scope assure that it will be the centerpiece of Gephardt's candidacy, and given the political history of the health care issue over the past decade, the success or failure of his campaign is likely to rest on his ability to defend it against criticism from Democrats and Republicans.

The Gephardt campaign included a cost analysis of the proposal by Ken Thorpe, a professor of health policy at Emory University who worked on the Clinton plan. He projected the cost at $213 billion in the first year and $247 billion by the third year, making the three-year cost $690 billion. Thorpe estimated that, after implementation, 97 percent of Americans would have health insurance.

To pay for it, Gephardt said, he would repeal all of Bush's 2001 tax cuts and also would eliminate any tax cuts that Congress approves this year. The candidate said he eventually would restore some provisions from the 2001 tax bill, including the child credit, marriage penalty relief and a reduction in estate taxes, but said they would be smaller and more targeted than those approved in 2001.

Gephardt's plan contains no provisions for containing rising health care costs, which could mean the plan would be significantly more expensive in later years. The candidate said that insuring all Americans would help lower health care costs.

The plan also lacks a provision for providing prescription drug benefits for senior citizens, a cornerstone of the Democrats' agenda. Gephardt still favors such a benefit, which would add a minimum of $50 billion a year to the budget deficit.